I can't believe anyone would want to read this

The adventures of a gainfully employed, divorced, 50 year old, vegetarian, twin, Jackson Browne loving, two time breast cancer surviviving, step mother, who is probably going to wind up being the crazy lady in the mobile home park who knits matching sweaters and tams for her herd of cats.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Get your Pulitzer applications shined up and ready to go!

As I think most of you know I was diagnosed with cancer, twice, way back in 1993. I wrote a book while I was sick and this is the result. I wrote it on an ooooolllddd computer that didn't have spell check or any of the other tools that are conducive to writing something that you want the world to read so please disregard the spelling, punctuation, grammatical and formatting errors. I just don't have it in me to retype the whole thing because I know if I do then I will change things in it and I want it to remain just the way I wrote it when I was living it. The ending just kind of fades away and maybe one of these days I'll go back and add some more details and close it up neat and tidy like, but for now...this is all there is.

I was so polite when I wrote a lot of this book. There was so much more going on in my life that I didn't include, such as being married to an alcoholic/rage-aholic/drug addicted compulsive liar. That would take up several volumes of it's own. (And when I'm ready to live through all of that again I will write that book, too.) I think I portrayed my first husband in a very complimentary light and for now I'm just going to leave it that way.

This book is me...showing you my soul. I know I have a few more readers than I do commenter's and I'm going to ask everyone, very politely, to please respond to me after you've read my book. If you can't figure out how to comment on the blog then write to me directly at clydejackson@yahoo.com.....otherwise I've done all of this for no apparent reason.

If you can't open the book in this format then I'm going to have to do some investigating and find out how to post it a different way but for now, here it is, warts and all.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The One about Miss Nator

I'm so sorry to have to publish this twice but the first time something went wrong and this is the only way I can think of to fix it.

Sincerely,Tanu

16 years and four months ago at about 6:00 in the morning I was getting ready for work and the phone rang. It was my mom."TORI'S IN LABOR! WE HAVE TO GET OVER TO HER HOUSE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!" All of a sudden I morphed in to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig all in one. (I would like to reference a very, very old cartoon where in the 3 aforementioned characters over slept and are hurrying around trying to get ready for work all at the same time...if you've seen it then you know what I looked like. If you haven't seen it because you are decades younger than me and have never watched a black and white, sketched Bug Bunny cartoon...then...I'm sorry for you because it's the funniest cartoon I've ever seen.)

I started hyperventilating and running around in circles. I was trying to get dressed but I couldn't find anything to wear even though I was standing right in front of an entire closet full of clothes. I threw a tee shirt over my head and tried to squeeze my head through the arm hole. Eventually I put my head through the proper opening and then I found my Levi's and put them on, hopping through the house with one leg in and the other leg partially stuck in the leg hole. I ran to get my purse and then decided that shoes might be a good option for someone who was anticipating being in a labor and delivery room of a hospital. I hopped back in to the bedroom and started throwing shoes out of the closet. I have 50 pairs of shoes and the only matching pair I could find were a pair of black patent leather platform heels that I had worn to my 20th high school reunion. I was almost resigned to wearing said patent leather shoes when I found something a bit more appropriate for the occasion. My Birkenstocks! Both of them! Yay! I put them on and then decided that I should probably brush my teeth since I figured that I'd be pretty much face to face with my laboring sister.

I flew in to the bathroom and started brushing my teeth as quickly as I could. In less than 15 seconds I had managed to cut my gums with the back side of my toothbrush and I splashed toothpaste in my eye and had toothpaste splattered all over my tee shirt. Perfect!

I could hear my mom's car honking in the driveway so I grabbed my purse and ran out the door. When I drive from my house to where my sister lived at the time I could make it in 4 minutes. My mom, who respects speed limits and stop signs, took 10 minutes to get there. I was so afraid that I was going to miss something that I was doing everything short of pushing down on her gas pedal leg.

When we got to Tori's house we found Tori sitting calmly on the couch waiting for her husband to finish what he was doing so that we could all get to the hospital. Tori's oldest son, Andrew, was quite put out because he wasn't allowed to go to the hospital with us. He just couldn't understand why 8 year olds were not allowed in the delivery room. (Now a days, I'll bet you couldn't PAY him to be in a delivery room.) Paul was angry because he just wanted to go anywhere the car was going.

Things were silently progressing inside my sister's body. She is very, very stealth when it comes to being in the early stages of labor so none of us knew how much time we had to get this dog and pony show on the road before it would be too late. When she finally got up and started heading to the car before her husband was ready to go it was pretty clear that we were running out of time. It took Tori a couple of minutes to make it from the couch, down the steps of the front porch to the awaiting Mommy Van. She decided that it would be easier to slide in to the back seat rather than try to climb up in to the bucket seat up front. Her husband kept trying to talk to her and she would just close her eyes and puff her cheeks up. That is Tori code for "I'm in grave amounts of pain and I do not want to talk to you or anyone else for that matter. Leave me alone or I will be forced to show you my mad Karate skillz and knock your block off. Thank you."

My mom stayed with Andrew and Paul and we headed off to Inter Community Hospital in Covina. Tori had already given birth to two babies so she knew that she had very little time before this one was going to be born. Unfortunately having a passenger in labor doesn't excuse the driver from breaking the speed limit so Tori's husband drove as fast as he could yet observed all of the posted speed limit signs. Again, if I had been the one driving we would have made it to the hospital in about an hour because that is how long it would have taken me to get pulled over, be issued a speeding ticket and then get back on my merry way.

When we got to the hospital we pulled right up to the front door. Tori barely waited until the van slowed down before she got out. Labor was hitting her harder than she thought and she had over estimated her ability to run for the hospital door. She had to sit down and luckily there was a bench just a few steps away. Her husband was getting out of the van and I was getting in to the drivers seat when I heard a small shriek from Tori. The bench she had sat down on was metal and it was freezing cold and wet with morning dew. Not conducive to a laboring woman.

Tori waddled towards the door and I went off to park the van. It only took me a couple of minutes to find a place to park and get inside the hospital. As slow as Tori was walking I was sure I'd be able to meet her in the lobby but when I got inside the hospital she was nowhere to be found. I would have asked the person at the front desk where my sister had gone however there was no one sitting at the desk that early in the morning.

I found my way to the maternity ward and asked them if they knew where Tori was and of course they had never even heard of my sister. I told them that she had just, not two minutes ago, come in and was in active labor. I described what my brother in law was wearing and still...nothing. Apparently my sister and brother in law had wrapped up in their cloak of invisibility and snuck through the maternity ward. I thought it would be in poor taste to go from door to door to see if I could find them so I stood in the lobby and called my sister's name. That went over almost as well as going from door to door. The nurses told me that I would have to wait quietly and they would help me find her. "You don't understand", I told them, "my sister goes from 0 to 60 in mere moments. If I don't find her immediately I might miss the whole thing!"

After about 10 minutes my brother in law came out and found me. The maternity ward was so full that they had to put Tori in the recovery ward. Left to my own devices I would have never thought to look for her there so I'm quite thankful he came out and got me. The room had 8 beds in it and several of them had women in various states of recovery. None of them were in the mood for the child birth cheer leader and his wacky side kick. Tori looked pale and green and I could see that she was in quite a bit of pain. We did what we could to ease her pain but she didn't want to be touched. She lay there in silence, trying to do her Lamaze breathing and then I heard her mumble.....

"Iwannaush...."

I looked at brother in law and said, "What did she say?", and she repeated it but with more emphasis and a lot more volume....

"I WANT TO PUSH!"

Ok, well that wasn't good. Brother in law and I immediately morphed in to our unrehearsed 3 Stooges routine. He went up to the head of the bed and told her not to push and then tried to get her to concentrate on him. She wouldn't even look at him. She was still doing her Lamaze breathing but now it looked like she was trying to blow up an imaginary balloon that had a hole in it. I went running for the door to try to flag down a nurse. "MY SISTER WANTS TO PUSH!! WE NEED HELP IN HERE!!!" The nurse that had just shown Tori to her bed looked at me like I was making all of this up. "She's only been her for 15 minutes...she couldn't possibly be ready to push....", she said. We made it back to Tori's bed and now her Lamaze breathing was reminiscent of someone chewing who had no teeth. She was slobbering air all over the place! The nurse asked me and brother in law to go to the head of the bed while she checked the dilation situation. I can only imagine that the baby was basically waving at the nurse when she pulled back the blanket because the next thing I knew the nurse was throwing scrub suits at me and brother in law and telling us to wash up. In the time it took us to wash up and put the scrub suits over our street clothes two orderlies had shown up and were moving the bed out of the recovery room. Of course they had to connect with each and every obstacle in the room and in the hallway. It truly looked like they were driving bumper cars!

Our scrub suits included covers for our shoes and here is a word to the wise: If you are ever going to attend a child birth don't try to run down a hallway wearing Birkenstock sandals with surgical scrub coverings over them. I was slipping and sliding all the way to the delivery room. I'm very thankful my morning at the hospital didn't conclude with a head full of stitches.

We got to the very small delivery room and the orderlies parked the bed and locked the wheels. The labor nurse started to take the bed apart and put Tori's legs in the stirrups. Tori had been virtually silent up until now but then she started making this dreadful noise that came from the depths of her soul. She sounded like a wounded animal. As fascinated as I was with this whole child birth situation I was woefully unprepared for dealing with seeing my sister in such pain. It scared me to death. I panicked and thought, "I can't do this. I have to get out of here." I was getting ready to bolt for the door when brother in law thrust a video camera in my hands. This was before the cute little hand held video cameras that we are familiar with today were invented. He had a state of the art camera that was about the size of a professional news crew camera. I got a 1 minute lesson on how to operate this thing and then all hell broke loose.

Tori's usual doctor was unavailable so the the doctor on call had to fill in. How would you like to meet your obstetrician for the very first time when you are in the throes of labor and find out that his name is Dumwrong Tanksherknob?? Ol' Dumwrong was wearing a head piece that looked like a welders mask so we couldn't see his mouth. So that coupled with his very thick accent...we couldn't understand anything he was saying. He was trying to talk to my sister and her only responses were shrieks and moans. Apparently that is OB speak for, "Yes, I give my permission for everyone in the hospital to come in here and look at my uncovered nether regions.", because before the doc got down to business there were 4 med students standing elbow to elbow at the end of the bed taking it all in. To this day we don't understand what they were doing there because the hospital we were at is not a teaching hospital and we were a good 30 miles from the nearest medical school. *(*UCLA)

So as soon as we had as many strangers in the room as possible the doctor said, "POOSH". Tori pooshed twice and presto chango there was a whole new human being on this planet. I. Was. Aabsolutely. Stunned. This was simply the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my entire life. There is nothing more pure and hopeful than watching a baby come in to this world and I am truly sorry for anyone who hasn't gotten to see this happen. I feel like I could go on about this for hours and I still couldn't begin to capture and express the wonderfulness I had just witnessed. I had been sobbing from the moment the camera was put in to my hands and now I got to trade the camera for my perfectly beautiful brand new niece. She was so tiny and gorgeous. She had dark hair and lots of it. Highly unusual for our family which famous for birthing bald headed babies. She was crying that pitiful "mwat mwat" cry of a new born and I knew right then that this child would have me wrapped around her finger for the rest of my life.

Tori was crying and shivering uncontrollably. Apparently there is a rush of hormones that flood the body after you give birth and it makes some women shiver. I thought Tori was going to shiver herself right off the table. "Smell her head", Tori told me. As I was still sobbing there was no way I was going to be able to smell anything so I tried to fake her out by doing what most 2 year olds do when you tell to smell something...I made a loud attempt at breathing out. I could smell the tiniest hint of what Tori wanted me to smell. I had no idea that newborns smell just like Johnson's baby products. I'm guessing that is what heaven smells like.

I got my act together enough to quietly sing the Jackson Browne song, "The Pretender" to her because that is the most beautiful song in the world and I wanted it to be the very first song she ever heard. I could only get through a few lines of the song because I was going to start sobbing again so instead I talked to her. I told her that I loved her more than life itself. I told her to always ask for big diamonds. I told her I would always be there for her no matter what. And..because I've seen every episode of "Friends"...I told her that I would always have gum.

Watching that birth was the most exciting moment of my life and I can't remember anything that happened after that baby arrived. The next day we got to bring the baby home and we all sat down to watch my cinematic efforts from the jumbo video camera. Imagine my surprise when it was revealed that my sobbing was the sound track of the entire birth. I'm sorry to say that the customized sound track paled in comparison to the approximately 5 minute long stretch where I thought I had put the camera on pause and had it resting at my side. The camera was not on pause and thus we were treated to several minutes of the camera just staring at the wall...however...my favorite part was the couple of times I was walking down the hall way and I was swinging the camera. UUUUUUppppp and dddddooooowwwnnn. UUUUPPPP and dooowwnn. It looked like bad special effects from a B movie of 1935. We laugh at it now but I was mortified when it happened.

Now that 16 years have passed I've watched that baby grow up. What was her name? Hannah Maureen? Kimberly Rebekah? Bethany Grace? We wouldn't know the answer for a couple of days. *(Interesting side note to the naming of this child: At the time of her birth her father was working on the TV show "ER", which starred Anthony Edwards. One of the names in the running for this new baby was Bethany. Paul confused "Bethany" with "Anthony" and for weeks after the birth he told everyone that he had a new sister named "Bethany Edwards".) She wound up with the name of Rebekah Maureen. "Rebekah" because it is a biblical name and "Maureen" because it was our grandmothers name. We hardly ever called her Rebekah. We called her BekahMo for the most part and then she was called "The Bekahnator". (We called her that so much that Paul thought her last name was "Nator"!) Now I just call her Bek.

Bek has always been as tough as nails which I'm sure is the result of being the first sister to two brothers. But no matter how tough she appears to be it is very hard to just sit back and watch when some stupid boy comes in to her life and says that he loves her and then changes his mind a few weeks later. It would be bad/sad enough if he'd only done it once but she's fallen for it 3 times now. She shed a few tears in front of the family but I'm sure there were a whole lot more that we didn't see. It has taken everything I have not to go to her city of residence and hunt down the idiot foolish*, (*title made up by Bek when she was about 2 years old), who did this and slap him silly. I have always been a firm believer in "an eye for an eye" and so I can only hope that when someone breaks his tender heart in half that I'm there to take pictures.

Friday, October 17, 2008

I was tagged!

I get so excited when someone reads my blog and even more excited when someone comments on it...but when someone goes to all the trouble to tag me for a meme and then actually write about me in an effort to introduce me to her readers...well....THAT JUST MAKES MY DAY!

This funny lady: http://bighairenvy.blogspot.com/ gave me a shout out and an invite to participate in the "7 Random/weird things about me" meme. Most people who know me would probably have a hard time narrowing it down to only 7 things but I'll see what I can do.

Here we go:

1. Don't be alarmed if you ever get something from Tanu or Tsmi. When I type too fast that is how my name turns out. I try to correct it if I see it but if I'm in such a big hurry that I can't spell my name right....there's a pretty good chance that I'm not going to see all of my mistakes.

2. I talk to Lorenzo all the time. He's deaf. He can't hear me. This doesn't stop me.

3. I used to eat pizza with a fork because I didn't like getting my hands dirty.

4. Apparently when I eat I take the food off of the fork with my teeth instead of my lips. I didn't know I did this until my nieces started to mock me and tease me about it.

5. I habitually check 5 or 6 books out of the library, only read 1 of them and then turn them all in after they are over due. If I had a credit card at the library the interest rate alone would bankrupt me.

6. I drink diet Coke. Not regular Coke. Not Pepsi. Not Diet Pepsi. There is no substitute for diet Coke and those other 3 drinks that I mentioned are weasel piss as far as I'm concerned.

7. I love it when people tell me that my daughter and I look just alike....simply because she isn't blood related to me at all. I raised her and she's mine but I didn't give birth to her.

Some of this might be old news...I can't remember what I've written before...so if this isn't new then I'll try harder next time.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

ASHLEIGH!! HOW DID YOU GET IN THERE?

Last Friday I came home and as I approached my front door I could hear Ashleigh crying. She is usually sitting in the kitchen window so she can watch me get out of my car and then she runs to the front door and sticks her nose in door edge so that she can weasel her way out while I’m trying to get in. Ashleigh didn’t sound like she was behind the door and she sounded distressed as opposed to gleeful that she was about to dart out the front door. I called her name and she started meowing non-stop. I thought that she was on the roof of my house or one of the neighboring houses. She gets up there sometimes and then acts like she is suddenly feeble and needs assistance getting down. But she was not on the roof. I thought that maybe she was on the shed and was really feigning feebleness but she wasn’t up there, either. As I started to walk away from the shed I heard her cry loud and clear. I was looking all over the place and just as I was almost convinced that she was being held captive in one of the neighboring houses I saw her. Look at this picture and see if you can figure out where she was.

Ashleigh was stuck in between the closed living room window and the screen. The screen was not ripped and the window was not opened. I have absolutely no idea how she got in there. I’ve been dwelling on this since it happened and I can’t even think of one possibility as to how that happened.

I ran inside the house and I very carefully opened the window. One of her legs was sliding along with the window and I could see that it was going to get pinched in between the two windows when they intersected so I had to actually take the whole window off.

Ashleigh screamed and hissed at me, like this was all my fault, and then bounded away down the hall. I have no idea how long she was stuck in that window but it didn’t seem to cause her any damage.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

I should have known something was up Part 2

A couple of days after I got the ceiling tile replaced I came home from work and immediately noticed that the new tile was on the floor and Ashleigh was no where to be seen. I thought that she had someone how managed to find her way outside through the gap between the ceiling and the exterior roof. I went outside and called her name and she came running. We played "Chase the monkey" (she sits still until I get with in inches of her and then she bounces off, kicking her hind feet and flicking her tail at me...) for a while. I finally caught her and got in back inside the house much to her hissing chagrin.

I sat down on the couch and I heard something land on the roof of my storage unit. I thought for sure that it was Willow finally coming home so I jumped up and ran across the room and opened the curtain and there I was...face to face with....

Lorenzo.

"Lorenzo? What are you doing outside?", I asked. I ran outside and put a ladder up so I could reach the top of the storage unit and I picked him up and brought him inside. It really scares me when he gets out because of him being deaf. He can't hear dogs or cars and I just know he's going to get injured. As I sat on the couch trying to clean the 2 inches of mud off of his pristine pink toes I heard a scratching at the screen behind my head. I turned around and I was ...face to face with...

Ashleigh.

WTF! "ASHLEIGH! I JUST BROUGHT YOU INSIDE. HOW DID YOU GET OUT ALREADY??"

I went outside and got her off of the 2 inch deep window sill. I told her that if she went outside that I was going to give her a spanking. (HA! I NEVER spank or hit my kitties in any way. The worst that I've ever done is flicked their nose to make them release me when they are biting me.) My threat didn't seem to worry her at all.

I put Ashleigh down, she wasn't muddy, and went back to trying to clean Lorenzo. I heard another thud on the storage shed. At this point I was pretty sure that I was going to become face to face with Ashton Kutcher because it was obvious that I was being Punk'd. However when I got to the window I was ... face to face...with...

Elijah.

Mind you...Elijah and Lorenzo were in the house when I came home initially. As I wondered where the hidden revolving door was located I went outside and collected Elijah off of the roof of the shed and as I approached the front door...there sat Ashleigh on the first step. I swear I could hear her laughing at me as I tried to bend over to pick her up without dropping Elijah. Ashleigh darted away and Elijah hung on for dear life. He dug in with all 20 claws and I don't think a nuclear explosion would have separated the two of us.

As I stood there bleeding I decided that Ashleigh could just stay outside because I was finished chasing her. I went in the house and caught Lorenzo right in the act of getting outside again.

When I brought Ashleigh in the house the first time I scanned the bottom of all of my screens for escape routes. Ashleigh's usual M.O. was to sit quietly and nimbly rip a tiny hole in the bottom of the screen and then with little or no effort just slide her head right through it. There were no holes in the bottom of the screens but there was a hole in the top of the screen that lead directly to the roof of the shed. I pulled Lorenzo out of the hole in the screen and I slammed the window shut. I went outside and I caught Ashleigh and I tossed her in side the house. As Ashleigh, Lorenzo and Elijah sat there looking and acting completely unaffected I made a big noisy point to shake my finger in their faces and slamming all of the windows shut. So what if it was 95 degrees in my house. I was going to teach them a lesson.

It didn't take them 5 minutes to find cool places for them to hide. Elijah splayed out on the kitchen floor. Lorenzo went under the bed and Ashleigh went under the couch. I, however, sat on the couch, in the blazing heat and tried to convince myself that I was vindicated. As I write this little excerpt of life....I'm beginning to think...not so much with the vindication.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

I should have known something was up.....

The other day I was busy sleeping in...enjoying the peace and quiet that is rarely found in my house. I felt a kitty jump up on to the bed and I assumed that it was the Lorenzo T2000 alarm clock getting ready to announce that feeding time had long passed and everyone had expired from lack of sustenance.

I pretended I was asleep which was really stupid because that never fools or concerns Lorenzo. If I feign sleep he will paw at me relentlessly and if push comes to shove he is not above going under the covers and biting me. Yoda says, "Subtle, he is not."

I waited for the squalling or pawing to start but it remained quiet. I was going to go back to sleep until I realized that the kitty was laying on top of me. This is a very rare occurrence. My fab 5 have each other to keep them company so they don't particularly cling to me. 4 of them sleep on my bed but they demand their own space and boy do I hear about it if I infiltrate their designated area. (Elijah is too afraid of Lorenzo to sleep on the bed with the rest of us. Lorenzo bullies him and he runs and hides. Elijah has simply cut out the middle man and doesn't ever come into my room any more.)

I peeked out of squinted eyes and was shocked beyond belief to see that it was Ashleigh laying on my chest. "Good morning, Ashey...to what do I owe this pleasure?", I said.

She flattened herself out and started to purr. "Oh, Mommy, I just love you so much. Let's just stay here and cuddle all day, k?", she said. "Well," I said, "we can stay here for a little while but not all day. Ya know, the only other time in your whole entire life that you ever came over and sat with me was when you were in labor the first time you had a litter of kittens. I know you aren't in labor this morning so ...what's up?"

Purr.

Purr.

Purr.

"Ok, Ash..we'll just snooze for a little while."

Just as I was dozing off Lorenzo came bounding in to the room. He always makes an entrance like "Kramer" on "Seinfeld." "MOM, MOM, MOM, MOM!!! WAKE UP! TIMMY'S IN THE WELL. GET UP. YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS. MOM! MOM! EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. DANGER WILL ROBINSON. DANGER!"

Nothing I said could convince Lorenzo that he was not starving to death nor was there a monster in the living room. He kept going on and on..."MoTHER! GET UP! EMPLOYEES MUST WASH THEIR HANDS! ARE YOU GETTING UP! MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS! DO I NEED TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE? MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH."

I decided that I needed to get up and feed this poor starving, growing boy but as I tried to have Ashleigh slide off of my chest she wouldn't budge. All of a sudden she weighed 50 lbs and she was not going to relinquish her perch. "Mom", Ashleigh said, ever so sweetly, "I thought we were going to cuddle all day?"

At this point it dawned on me that I was being conned by Ashleigh and Lorenzo was tattling on her. I physically removed Ashleigh from my chest and she scrambled right back up there before I could even sit up. She hunkered down making herself as big and flat as possible, looking me in the eyes with her cute little winky, blinky, kitty face. I figured that whatever malfeasance that had taken place could wait until Ashleigh was ready to get up. (Quite frankly most of Lorenzo's emergencies are of the gastronomic genre and I can assure you he has never missed a meal in his life so I thought it would be ok to just enjoy Ashleigh's company for a little while longer.)

Lorenzo sat down in a huff and Ashleigh started to purr. I was just drifting off when I felt a whisker tickle my cheek...

just...

before..

Lorenzo...

bit..me.

I bolted upright and Ashleigh flew off the bed. He didn't bite me hard enough to break the skin but he bit me hard enough that I realized he meant business. Lorenzo had made his point and I got up made my way in to the kitchen. I opened a can of food and put it in the bowl and invited Lorenzo to knock himself out. I was going to go inspect my wound when out of the corner of my eye I saw this:

Apparently Ashleigh had been very busy during my sleeping hours and this was the result. She had managed to pull out one of my ceiling tiles. Is this pretty or what? You can also see that the curtain rod is missing. I'm guessing that she climbed up the curtain and hung on to the curtain rod while she finessed the ceiling tile out of it's groove. The curtain rod was bent beyond repair and the ceiling tile was all but packing peanuts scattered all over my carpet.

"OMG, LoRENZO, YOU ARE SUCH A TATTLE TALE. STOP DOING THE HAPPY DANCE!"

Friday, October 03, 2008

Lorenzo found the best pillow in the house

Just in case you can't tell what this stellar pillow is made out of....Lorenzo is snuggling up with my purple lace bra and my breast prosthesis. If I don't put it in a drawer when I take it off he will seek it out and sleep on it.

You, too, can have a kitty pillow just like this for somewhere around $350.00. See your insurance representative for details.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Brush with greatness

Just after I came back from my fabulous vacation I went to the Huntington Beach street fair and I saw a very small sign that announced former Van Halen bass player/keyboard player Michael Anthony was going to be making a guest appearance at one of the shops on Main Street later on in the week.

I made a valiant effort to get to the shop as early as possible so that I wouldn't have to stand in a line to get to meet this rock and roll icon.

I'm sorry to announce that when I got there...he and I were the only ones in the store who didn't work there.

We talked a little bit about him playing with Sammy Hagar these days and then he had to excuse him self because his wife had called him on his blackberry. I'm kinda glad she called. I had run out of things to say.

He was as sweet and nice as he could possibly be. He even offered me a shot of Jack Daniels. Out of a dirty shot glass.

Contrary to the intoxicated look on my face in these pictures...I declined the Jack Daniels which now I regret. How many times am I going to get the opportunity to throw back shots with a rock star?